Open Space
by Dante de Troy
Summary: The life of an immortal born at the beginning of a nation's finest hour. (Chapter 3 is up, keep reading and reviewing, guys, its very encouraging!)
1. Grounded

Open Space  
  
by Joshua "Dante" Epstein  
  
CHAPTER I: GROUNDED  
  
December 6th, 1941  
  
Benjamin Kenneth Lloyd was 18 years old when he joined the army. The eldest child of a famiy with a military tradition stretching back to before the dawn of the country, Benny's mother and father had been infuriated when he had failed to gain acceptance to West Point. The only thing that he could have done that might disappoint them further, he had. When the war in Europe really began to look bad, he'd enlisted in the Air Force, hoping that, if he waited long and worked hard enough, he might make his way up through the ranks and see combat. That was two years ago, and Benny had been detached two years ago to the base at Pearl Harbor to help maintenance the fighter squadrons stationed there.  
  
"Lloyd! Move your ass with that truck!" The bellow of the non-com airfield commander sent Benny scurrying for the fuel truck's driver seat.  
  
As he drove the sluggish fuel carrier across the tarmac, he watched the pilots climbing in and out of the cockpits in their sleek Mustangs. He felt a pang of jealousy as he watched, knowing that he couldn't join their little circles at mess, being just a lowly fuel-jockey. He knew everything there was to know about airplanes, but he'd contracted a mild form of polio in his youth, leaving his body with a reaction time slightly higher than that of molasses. The damage to his spinal cord wasn't enough to keep him from grunt work, but did a more than adequate job of keeping him away from the controls of a fighter.  
  
He spent the better part of the afternoon moving about the field, refueling fighters, bombers, and the occasional officer's Jeep. When the sun had been down for an hour or so, he was finally dismissed. He poured himself into a booth in the bar and ordered a beer as he lit up a Lucky Strike. He poured crew after brew down his gullet as he watched the grinning, laughing flyboys flit in and out, as fast and erratic on the ground as they were in the air.  
  
"Hell of a way to spend a way." He muttered to himself. He paid the check and staggered back to the barracks, where he passed out in his bunk.  
  
***  
  
Several hundred miles away, a flotilla of Japanese Carriers made their way toward the tiny islands; their goal: an attack that would go down in the history books. 


	2. The Fallen

Open Space  
  
by Joshua "Dante" Epstein  
  
CHAPTER II: THE FALLEN  
  
December 7, 1941  
  
Everywhere, sirens wailed as wave after wave of chaos and destruction swept the once orderly cove that was Pearl Harbor. Flame shot into the sky as gas tanks erupted, and bodies lay strewn about like so much debris.  
  
As the Japanese fighters' engine noise slowly faded and the sounds were narrowed to the moaning of the dying and the seemingly interminable sound of the alarm sirens, one man lay apart from the others. He was huddled in the corner of one of the few surviving hangers. To say that the hanger had survived was a generous statement, owing the sizeable hole in its roof where a bomb had fallen through. Luckily, the hanger had only been in use as equipment storage shed when the bomb had fallen, so no fuel had been there. All that had been there of any value was the young Private Benjamin Lloyd. The same Private Benjamin Lloyd who now sat trembling in the corner, clutching his torn, blood soaked uniform shirt between his hands against his smooth, unscarred chest where, just moments before, a Frisbee sized piece of shrapnel had ripped into his body.  
  
What am I? Benny frantically asked himself, nearing the edge of hysteria. This isn't possible. It's not natural. WHAT AM I?  
  
Terrified as much of himself as anything else, Benny ran from the hanger onto the tarmac, littered with the wreckage of burning planes that had never been able to get off the ground. What he saw around him nearly made him forget his terror at what he was becoming. Men, his friends, were laying everywhere, dead, dying, or maimed.  
  
Benny knelt next to the body of his bunkmate, Thomas Ryan, who was clutching his stomach. The fabric of his t-shirt (for Thomas had run to combat straight from bed) was wet with a growing red stain.  
  
"Heya Ben." Benny took Thomas' hand in his own, feeling Ryan grasp back with a surprisingly firm grip. "You look good. Better'n me."  
  
"Enough'a that, Tom. You're gonna make it. Just hang with me til a medic gets here."  
  
"Nah. Got a good hunk of American-made steel in my belly, Ben. Medic's not gonna be able to do whole lot."  
  
"Quit it! I'm not gonna let you die on me!"  
  
"Wish you had a say in it, Benny-boy. Hey, c'mere." Tom reached to his neck and pulled out the chain that had his dog tags. Also attached to it was a small metal locket. He opened it and showed the pictures inside to Ben.  
  
"S'my wife and boy, Ben. He's a good kid. And god. god she's beautiful." He was trying to hold on now, long enough to say what he had to say. "Just do me this, Ben. Tell em I love em and that I miss em and how they're all I thought of every day."  
  
"You're gonna tell em, Tom."  
  
"Shut up with that shit! I'm done here, Benny." The pain in his guy wracked Ryan's body. "Just do this for me, huh, buddy?"  
  
Benny nodded.  
  
"Thanks. And one more thing."  
  
"What's that, Tom."  
  
"In my foot locker there's a name of a guy in San Francisco. He knows."  
  
"He knows what Tom?"  
  
"He knows what you are." Thomas trailed off and Benny felt the grip on his hand loosen and fall away. Benny closed Thomas' eyes and stood up, staring off to the east, where he thought he could almost see the few fighters that had managed to get aloft making their last attempt the drive the Japanese back. What he was would have to wait. There was a war to fight. 


	3. Taking Flight

Open Space  
  
By Joshua "Dante" Epstein  
  
CHAPTER III: TAKING FLIGHT  
  
January 21st, 1941  
  
"Lloyd, move your ass and get in here!"  
  
Benny tossed the book back into his foot locker and hopped off his bunk, running for the sergeant's office.  
  
"'Bout damned time. Sit your ass down, Lloyd."  
  
Sergeant Jack Carsten was a big, brutish man, the stereotypical career enlisted man. His broad shoulder bore a set of stripes that were stitched on to perfection, and the man's uniform was as neat as any outside of the Pentagon. No mean feat in what remained of the Pacific Fleet, hundreds of miles from the mainland.  
  
"You mind explaining this, kid?"  
  
Carsten tossed a folder on the desk in front of him.  
  
"That's your latest physical evaluation, Lloyd. Now, let me read you something." He pulled another folder from the desk drawer. "Lloyd, Benjamin K. 'As a result of this man's childhood exposure to polio, his reflexes are very stunted. Despite this, he demonstrates sufficient physical ability to qualify him for limited duty.'" He snapped the folder shut. "Now, read me what it says in the folder you've got there."  
  
Benny opened up the folder and read the words inside.  
  
"Though the cause remains totally inexplicable, the subject has demonstrated a remarkable increase in both hand-eye coordination and in his overall physical capability. It is recommended that duty restrictions be removed and Private Lloyd be allowed to enter flight training, as befits his current test scores."  
  
The last few words that came out of his mouth were spoken so slowly and softly that they were almost inaudible, but they seemed to echo in Benny's ears.  
  
"What's this mean, Sarge?"  
  
"It means you've got twenty-four hours to get your shit wired and get the hell out of my barracks. You're going back the mainland for training. Next time I see you, you'd damn well better have some bars on your shoulders."  
  
Benny didn't even try to hold back the grin that threatened to split his face as he ran back out into the barracks. He didn't know how this had happened, but he could feel whatever it was working inside him. Anything that had ever been wrong with him was gone. He felt more alive than ever, more aware of everything around him. The Hawaiian sun beating down on his face was like a light from heaven as he ran in circles, drawing stares from some, laughs from others. Everyone who had ever spent ten minutes talking to Benny Lloyd had known that he wanted to fly. Now he was about to, and he was the happiest man alive.  
  
  
  
June 5th, 1942  
  
Benny had taken to keeping a journal when he had started flight training. So much was happening, and it all seemed to be happening so fast now, that he had to write it down to keep it straight.  
  
"Tomorrow's graduation. Damned if I know how things went so fast, but they still don't seem to happen fast enough for me. I've been champing at the bit to get in it. I hear tell of big fights out in the Pacific, and that our guys can finally fly in our own planes over in England. I haven't heard where I'm heading after tomorrow, but wherever it is, I'll be mighty glad to in there and mix it up. Maybe I'll even have time to get to San Francisco. Still got a lot of questions that need to be answered."  
  
Benny pulled on his jacket and picked up his cap, fitting it snugly on his head before checking himself out in the mirror. He still couldn't get used to the sight of himself in a real uniform. After so long in the coveralls of a tarmac rat, he had come to almost worship the fliers and their dashingly perfect uniforms. Now he was almost one of them.  
  
Graduation came and went and Benny found himself once again bound for "the scene of the crime". Pearl Harbor. He looked around, finding the place both familiar and different at the same time. New construction had been completed since the Japanese sneak attack, but there were still very real reminders of the destruction that had been wrought on what had once been an island paradise.  
  
"Took you long enough."  
  
Benny grinned and turned around.  
  
".Sir."  
  
The burly shape of Sergeant Carsten was there, attempting to hide a smile as he saluted his superior officer.  
  
"Sergeant. Good to see you."  
  
Benny returned the salute and gave the man a firm, hearty handshake.  
  
"So they sent you back here, huh? Or could you just not stay away."  
  
"I'm not here for too long. I'm bound for the Yorktown in not too long."  
  
"That beast? She's ugly as all hell."  
  
"She may be ugly as hell, Sarge, but she'll be right in the thick of it when we get our own back from the Japs."  
  
"You've got a point, I guess. Still."  
  
"Yeah, yeah. Come on Sarge, let me buy you a beer."  
  
They both laughed, but as they walked away, Benny stopped in his tracks, suddenly keenly aware of. something. He looked around, but didn't see anything out of the ordinary until he saw someone watching him with an almost. predatory look on his face. Benny never took his eyes off the man, but still walked away.  
  
What the hell was that? He thought to himself as he followed Carsten to the nearest bar. 


	4. Engaged

Open Space

By Joshua "Dante" Epstein

CHAPTER IV: Engaged

June 10th, 1942

Benny yanked back hard on the Mustang's stick, pulling the nose up and back into a tight roll, trying to get on the Messerschmidt's tail.

Aint life great, he thought to himself. He'd been in London less than a day when the sirens had gone off and his squadron had been scrambled to provide relief for the beleaguered RAF fighters. Less than a year ago, he'd been a buck private with no future off the tarmac, and now here he was, dueling with airborne foes like a knight of the sky.

With a jerk to the left, he brought his crosshairs in line with the Messer's tail and let loose with a stream of tracers ending with a whoop of victory as the German pilot bailed out before his plane erupted in a ball of fire.

"Don't get cocky kid." A voice came over his headset, Captain Johnston, the squadron leader. "You're got another one on your six and he's coming in hot and heavy."

"Just the way I like it, Cap."

"Okay kid, I'm moving to back you up, just don't let him get position."

"Roger that."

The enemy fighter was wasting no time, corraling him with streams of tracers to either side, keeping him from dodging left or right. Benny could feel a strange tingling in his skull, like someone whispering to him, but he couldn't make out the words. The distraction was all the German pilot needed, stitching a line of holes up the side of Benny's fighter that sent it careening toward the ground. Benny tried to bail, but the hatch was jammed shut, a hinge bent by a ricochet.

"Mayday, mayday, this is Tiger two-six, going down, repeat, I am going down."

The ground was rushing forward at amazing speed and Benny wondered if he'd go to heaven or not as the plane smashed into the ground.


End file.
